The Tall House Mystery (Musaicum Murder Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding

him the floor on which his own bedroom was.

      Appleton seemed greatly interested. "I wonder if the chap who owns these would be willing to sell anything," he murmured. Ingram knew that Appleton often acted as intermediary in such transactions. The one-time actor had long ago run through the fortune left him and, except for his wife's steady income, his household would have been in straights long ago. Ingram had helped Appleton many a time, and would do so many a time more, but not to any large amount. He had learned that that was folly.

      He did not feel at liberty to show him the inside of any of the rooms except his own and Gilmour's, who, he knew, would not mind all the world tramping through his quarters. As it was, the two rooms and the corridor kept them quite a while, for Appleton seemed to have a passion for trying to date furniture. He suggested once or twice that his brother-in-law should leave him, but Ingram assured him that at the moment he had the time to spare. But at last he grew restive and frankly glanced at the clock on the landing below them. Appleton caught the glance. Ingram apologized. "I had no idea the time had flown so," he said then. "As a matter of fact I am rather rushing some work to its end—and to the printers. So if you really won't stop and have a drink?..."

      Appleton said that he too was rather in a hurry, and took himself off, after insisting that Ingram should not come down with him.

      Moy happened to be coming down the stairs as Appleton was shown out. In the shadowy recess of the landing sat Tark, his head bent over his note-book. He seemed to have as much love for figures as had Ingram. Whenever Moy ran across him, if he was by himself, Tark would be writing in his rather large note-book what looked like sets of figures. He would do this in the oddest places, perched on the side of a tub, squatting on the stairs or astride the window ledge. Wherever an idea struck him, if idea it was, Tark would bring out his note-book and well-sharpened pencil, and seem to lose the world for some few minutes. He never appeared to be afraid of being overlooked, though, as far as Moy knew, he never talked of what he was entering with such care.

      As Appleton took his hat from the butler he turned and faced the landing. At the same second Tark looked down to the front door. The two men looked at one another. It was an odd look, Moy thought, to pass between a couple of strangers, or mere acquaintances. It was so straight and so long and so utterly blank. Then the door closed behind Appleton and Tark, putting his note-book away, ran lightly down the stairs into a little room on the left of the front door. As it happened, Moy was on his way to the room on the right, and there, thinking of Appleton and Tark and that silent look, he glanced through the window netting. Appleton was lighting a cigarette on the pavement. He was just outside the window of the room where Tark was and, as he threw away the match, he looked at it and shook his head with a quick but decided shake, then he walked on. Moy told himself that writing plays, or trying to write them, was bad for one's brain. Appleton was always shaking his head or twitching his forehead or whisking something invisible off his cheek. And as for Tark, his indifference towards his fellow-men was quite real, Moy felt certain, and went to the bone. It was no acquired armor. True, he had seemed at first desirous of talking to Ingram, but that desire was so patently not shared by the mathematician that Tark seemed to have quite given up all attempts to have a word alone with him, and now to include Ingram in his cold lack of interest.

      CHAPTER 4

       Table of Contents

      EVEN Tark looked quite alert, for him, next day when he came to lunch. Gilmour and his fiancée—for so the household called her—had not yet come in. Mrs. Pratt was radiant and chatting gaily to everyone. Winnie was silent, but her cheeks glowed with so vivid a rose and the color faded so noticeably as the minutes passed that Moy wondered whether Mrs. Pratt had just slapped them. A slanderous thought. They were due to firm applications of a sponge and hot water. When Winnie did talk it was to Ingram, ignoring Haliburton.

      Then the door opened and there fell an absolute hush as Gilmour and a lithe, dark-haired, pale girl came in. Every eye was riveted on Alfreda. Even Ingram who had heard her name mentioned in connection with Gilmour some time ago, had never met her, managed to be looking at the door. He was curious to see the face that could eclipse the beauty of Winnie Pratt's. Miss Longstaff stood a second half-smiling at the interest that met her. It was an enigmatic smile, Moy thought. And a rather enigmatic face. Perhaps that was what had attracted Gilmour, who began to introduce her to Mrs. Pratt in a boyish way that was very taking.

      As for Ingram, he could hardly believe his eyes. He had known beforehand that she would fall short of Winnie's standard, but that this elfish, peaky-faced chit could keep a man from realizing the loveliness of Winnie—why Gilmour must be blind! Haliburton thought the same. Moy too was disappointed. Yet he could see something, that, supposing it appealed to you, would be found in Alfreda's face but not in Winnie's. For one thing Miss Longstaff looked clever, he thought, also discontented—or was it merely dissatisfied? She talked well at lunch, with an air of doing so for her own amusement, not merely to brighten the lives of others. Mrs. Pratt alone had welcomed the newcomer warmly. As for her daughter, after one swift glance at the other girl, she ignored her. Gilmour did not seem even to remember Winnie's existence as he devoted himself to the girl now seated beside him. Once when Gilmour got up to lay her gloves aside for her, she followed his figure with a look that intrigued Moy. There was not a spark of affection in that glance, he would have said, only something coldly inquisitive. She caught his own meditative look full, and in return fixed her own dark, unfathomable stare on him. Neither seemed to wish to be the first to look away. Then she finally turned her head aside to Miss Pratt. Looking at the beautiful curve of the slightly averted fair head there came into Alfreda's face a smile that showed unexpectedly strong white teeth, and there was something else, something sardonic, Moy fancied for an instant, before the smile passed. Miss Pratt seemed to sense it too, for she looked around swiftly, came to life, and began to chat and laugh, and finally went off gaily with Alfreda for a trial on the tennis court. There was no question as to who was the better player. Miss Longstaff seemed to have tireless muscles. Moy, watching with the other men, decided that she was playing Miss Pratt as well as the game. She sent her merciless balls at merciless angles and made a pace with which Winnie could not possibly cope. But Winnie fought with unexpected pluck and grit. She did not let any game go without a struggle. At the end, hopeless though it was, she was playing better than at first, that mark of the good fighter. One advantage she had. She looked like a child of sixteen with her tumbled curls against her softly flushed little face. It was wet with exertion, but it only looked like the dew on a flower. Miss Longstaff showed no hint of color in her thin pale cheeks, but she shot a glance at the other when the set was over that looked vexed, Moy thought, and as though something had not turned out quite as she meant it to. Fortunately Winnie took it all with great dignity, Moy thought, until later when he went into the hall to consult an A.B.C. on a side table. From a room beside him a voice which he knew was Winnie's and yet which he hardly recognized as hers.

      She was saying: "I won't let her have him! It's no use, mother. She shan't have him!"

      "Haven't you got any pride?" came in withering tones from her mother. At least Moy called the tones withering, but Winnie survived. For she said still in that tense, desperate voice: "I won't give him up to her! She doesn't love him. Oh, mother, if it came to a test between us, he would see which of us really loved him! A real test would soon prove——"

      "I don't recognize you," Mrs. Pratt interrupted in a voice that suggested a genuine difficulty to do this. "He doesn't care for you. He loves this charming young girl."

      "Young girl! She's old enough to be his m—well, she's over thirty." Winnie had evidently realized that by no stretch of dislike could Alfreda be Gilmour's mother.

      "She's about three years older than you in years I fancy, my dear, but a lot in sense," her mother replied. "The trouble with you, Winnie, is that you're spoiled. You've always had what you wanted, so you're tired of what you can get, and are hankering after what you can't have. Let me tell you, my dear girl, there's nothing more fatal to happiness in man or woman." Mrs. Pratt spoke with real feeling. "The fox was wise who said the grapes he couldn't have were sour. A fool would have set his heart on them just because he couldn't have